I haven’t sent it off to my editor yet– I need to look it over one more time to see if there are horrible mistakes anywhere– but I’m officially declaring the third draft of the book-in-progress to be complete. It clocks in at 61,518 words, and 240 pages. That’s 50% more words than the contract calls for, but it is down 8,000 words and 23 pages from the second draft.

Most of the reduction came from dropping the former Chapter 9, which was an uneasy fit with the rest of the material. It may become a web site extra at some point in the future. The rest of the edits included some substantial re-working of Chapters 2 and 5, dropping whole sections of each, along with a general tightening up of everything. I think it’s less conversational than the previous draft, but it’s probably punchier, if that makes sense.

This ought to be the official final turned-in draft, though I’m sure there are a host of things to be done after this. For now, I’m going to enjoy being Done, and head off to Scenic Whitney Point for the holidays.

I think the idea of a web version would solve many of the problems with “technical detail” you mentioned in your previous post about the book. Each chapter could conclude with a fine print paragraph identifying points that get elaborated on the web.

If it gets published in Kindle format, there might even be a way to sell or just download extra material to interested parties.

The former chapter 9 (which was chapter 10 in the last draft) was on extra dimensions. Which was there mostly because I thought of a really good joke for the dog dialogue– it’s more quantum gravity/ relativity than the low-energy quantum stuff that’s in the rest of the book. It wasn’t a great fit with the rest of the material, and length was becoming an issue, so I decided to drop it.

Merry (X^n)-mas, by induction. SteelyKid looks good in Tartan. Which is a flashback to the two Glasgow Worldcons? Or a Scottish background for Chad or Kate? Or a wee nip of single malt in the baby bottle? Or simply that SteelyKid looks good in Tartan?

My son is home briefly, in between his semester’s final exams at law school, and a short ski trip to Big Bear and the copious new snow. We went to Xmas dinner at a physicist friend’s home, wished everyone “Happy Newton’s Birthday), reminisced about how 40 years earlier, to the day, Borman et al read from Genesis on live TV while orbiting the Moon, consumed vast quantities of Prime Rib, and politely avoided complaining about the host’s 91-year-old dad’s misadjusted hearing aids, which caused him to insist on cranking up the audio volume of the Mormon Tabernacle Chopirs singing Xmas carols, and then (once it was too loud for conversation) bombarding us with things that he believes because he read them on the internet, such as that Obama is Islamic.

Said host’s dad then gifted me with two books, which contradicted each other, one a fundamentalist bag o’ hype about the Last Days and Jerusalem, and the other a thoughtful scholarly tome on the Islamic geopolitical world. My son gave me “Dirt for Art’s Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita” by Elisabeth Ladenson. My main gift to family is my $800.00 worth of Rose Bowl tickets.

My dog explained at length how much she appreciated the Prime Rib bone. In semi-classical terms.

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Books

You've read the blog, now try the books:

Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist will be published in December 2014 by Basic Books. "This fun, diverse, and accessible look at how science works will convert even the biggest science phobe." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "In writing that is welcoming but not overly bouncy, persuasive in a careful way but also enticing, Orzel reveals the “process of looking at the world, figuring out how things work, testing that knowledge, and sharing it with others.”...With an easy hand, Orzel ties together card games with communicating in the laboratory; playing sports and learning how to test and refine; the details of some hard science—Rutherford’s gold foil, Cavendish’s lamps and magnets—and entertaining stories that disclose the process that leads from observation to colorful narrative." --Kirkus ReviewsGoogle+

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog is published by Basic Books. "“Unlike quantum physics, which remains bizarre even to experts, much of relativity makes sense. Thus, Einstein’s special relativity merely states that the laws of physics and the speed of light are identical for all observers in smooth motion. This sounds trivial but leads to weird if delightfully comprehensible phenomena, provided someone like Orzel delivers a clear explanation of why.” --Kirkus Reviews "Bravo to both man and dog." The New York Times.

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is published by Scribner. "It's hard to imagine a better way for the mathematically and scientifically challenged, in particular, to grasp basic quantum physics." -- Booklist "Chad Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is an absolutely delightful book on many axes: first, its subject matter, quantum physics, is arguably the most mind-bending scientific subject we have; second, the device of the book -- a quantum physicist, Orzel, explains quantum physics to Emmy, his cheeky German shepherd -- is a hoot, and has the singular advantage of making the mind-bending a little less traumatic when the going gets tough (quantum physics has a certain irreducible complexity that precludes an easy understanding of its implications); finally, third, it is extremely well-written, combining a scientist's rigor and accuracy with a natural raconteur's storytelling skill." -- BoingBoing